8 ms·

Ear Training Practice

332 points by mattbit 4mo ago

vunderba 4mo ago
These are all good exercises that help you build a solid foundation, but they can sometimes cause motivation to dip being somewhat clinical in nature. So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. I find that the satisfaction they get from being able to recreate a familiar pop‑culture melody really helps spark their interest in getting better at playing by ear, which in turn motivates them to stick with the exercises. Shameless plug but I built a unique game specifically to help some of my more classically trained friends get better at playing piano by ear. It's a free piano game in the style of the old "Simon" toy which presents players with increasingly longer sequences of musical notes and challenges them to reproduce the sequence using either an on-screen piano or connected MIDI keyboard. It also works with acoustic instruments through the mic. https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net
- smeej 4mo ago
  Just testing out practice mode, I found what I really wanted was to be able to stay at a certain level until I felt I was getting good at sequences of that length, not immediately get pushed to the next level every time even when it took me 8 tries to get the 4-note sequence right. Give me a chance to feel like I'm improving! Don't just keep giving me harder things when I keep struggling with the existing ones.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    It already has that feature! :) It’s just not very obvious. If you click the small lock icon near the top, it will snap and to that difficulty so you can practice only sequences with that specific number of notes.
    - enobrev 4mo ago
      This is so well done and very cool. Thanks for building it and offering it. As someone who hasn't had a piano lesson in about 40 years, I find myself wanting to play with the keys to match the melody. So I hear the initial melody, and then I'm practically hitting keys at random (guessing where I should be on the keyboard) until I find the first note, and then I have to listen over and over again while trying to find the second note. I kind of want to hunt and peck until I'm ready and then get tested to see if I nailed it.
      - vunderba 4mo ago
        Glad you like it! A couple of people have asked for this feature and I guess I've been struggling with how to fit this concept into the game. Maybe the answer really is just as simple as a little visual toggle that puts you in a "sandbox" mode where all the sounds still go through, but the game doesn’t respond to them until you untoggle it.
        latexr 4mo ago
        Put me up as another person wanting that feature, it was how I expected it would work.
        udit99 4mo ago
        same!
        vunderba 4mo ago
        Done! It's a toggle called "Free Play", and you can default it to on in the Settings.
        enobrev 4mo ago
        I love it! So much fun. Thanks for adding Free Play!
        udit99 4mo ago
  - gbro3n 4mo ago
    For https://www.asmusictheory.com https://www.asmusictheory.com, I built in a spaced repetition test section to aid memory retention, along with "a free play" mode for when you just want to explore.
    - treme 4mo ago
      looks fantastic, just what I was looking for. will try, tyvm
      - gbro3n 4mo ago
        Thank you. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
    - ____tom____ 4mo ago
      No sound on an iPhone. They keyboard visually responds. Tried safari and Firefox focus
      - gbro3n 4mo ago
        Thank you for your feedback - I have it working on iPadOS 26.5 (Chrome and Safari). The browser auto-play policy does require some interaction with the page before it will play (so the first key press is often mute, but should sound after). There is a button on the control bar to enable sound explicitly. I will look for more instances (not to ask the really obvious question, but do you have sound turned up or a bluetooth connection you're not aware of by any chance?). Thanks again
- swestwood 4mo ago
  This is really simple and great!! Thanks for not stuffing it with ads. Is there a way to make it work a bit better for phones? On mobile Safari, just tapping to enable sound doesn’t seem to work until I reload and tap again.
- apercu 4mo ago
  I think this is smart. I have never done ear training apps because I just don't like to learn music that way - it doesn't "stick" for me. I like to learn in the context of a song. Here's what a melody sounds like when you start it over the 1 of a chord. Here's a melody when you start it on the 3 over a chord. But, again, in the context of a known song. I just don't think "non-musical" exercises have ever moved me forward as a musician, if that makes sense.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    I’m with you. I rarely use mechanical drills, even though I recognize that they can sometimes have value (cough Hanon cough), especially when you’re focusing on ergonomics. I tend instead to focus on things my student already enjoys, because it gives them a grounding. Another trick I like to do is take a popular song, rip out the melody, and keep the chord progression. Then I’ll usually scaffold a nice accompaniment using Band-in-a-Box so the student has something looping in the background while they try to piece out the original melody themselves on their respective instrument. That can sometimes give them more guidance, since it locks them into a specific key signature and helps them feel the flow and explore the space.
- sebastiansm7 4mo ago
  This is very fun!
- raincole 4mo ago
  First of all, thank you for making it free! I'm completely new to ear training. Could you give some advice on what a newbie should think while doing this? For example, should I try to sing the thing in solfeges in my head, or it's considered bad practice? And if I do, should I sing the first note as Do?
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    So the only problem is that until you've internalized the intervals a bit better, you might get frustrated trying to sing out solfege since you might say "re" when the note was "mi" in the context of the key signature and that might reinforce a bad intervalic relationship. However you could still hum/whistle the pitches as an assistive tool. If you’d like to make things a bit easier, you can go into the options and restrict the key signature. That way you can keep it simple and just practice in a more common keys like one major scale like C major and its relative minor, A minor. Where I really recommend "singing" out each note is when I'm teaching my students to improvise on the piano since it creates a sort of intentionality about what you’re about to hear and sing. For example, if they had a chord progression or melodic idea in mind but accidentally played a wrong note, they’ll notice right away because what they’re singing won’t match what they’re playing. Whereas if you don’t sing or whistle the notes as you play your instrument, you might not notice that you’re drifting off from what you actually intended to play because within the confines of the key signature it might still sound melodically acceptable (if that makes sense).
- adamddev1 4mo ago
  This is quite a nice idea and works well, but I think I would rather spend the time listening to and imitating real Miles Davis solos etc.
- makr17 4mo ago
  I remember in jazz class the instructor had a stack of jingles that showcased particular "weird" intervals. The only one I really remember now is the "Alway Coca Cola" jingle and a M6, but this was a _long_ time ago.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    Yes! "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" is another popular one for demonstrating a major 6th. Side note but I'd love to see a nicely printed stack of physical cards with popular melodic hooks/jingles, the demonstrated intervals, notation, etc.
- dasyatidprime 4mo ago
  > So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. As someone who had ongoing formal musical training from childhood through university, I can attest that multiple teachers used a similar technique, focusing on finding a group of commonly-heard melodies such that the first intervals encountered in them cover as much of the set as possible. Haven't tried the game yet, but looking forward to checking it out later to see if I can offer it to some of my friends who want to learn music better!
- alok-g 4mo ago
  Nice! My wish list for this: 1. Even the practice mode has a high bar as it expects me to get the whole thing right in the first shot. It should let me try some before jumping to tell me I got it wrong and automatically playing it again. 2. Show me the first key of the sequence and have me figure only the rest. Why: When I hear the note sequence, I cannot pick the absolute scale, only the intervals. So I practically always get the first key wrong, which then goes to #1 above. May be there are some settings related to the above. I could not find if there.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    Hi alok-g, I'm going to be implementing number 1 - a "playground" that lets you sort of plink around until you're happy. I've gotten a number of requests for this. The second request has me a bit confused, so I may be misunderstanding. Under “Note hints” in the options, there are three different modes for practice. In all of them in Practice Mode, the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Then depending on the "Note Hints", you can basically change the exercise from an ear training exercise to a sheet reading exercise. If you change Mode from Practice to Simon, even though it doesn't show the first note - it's always the root of the signature - e.g. if it says G Major, then the first note of the sequence is always G. I should probably make that more clear. Does that description line up with what you’re seeing?
    - alok-g 4mo ago
      >> ... the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Oh, the sheet notation! I can't read that :-), so had completely ignored it. I would like to see the same notes on the piano roll!, say as labels on the keys "*1", "2", "3", "4" (the same options could control the visibility).
      - vunderba 4mo ago
        Oh! I completely hadn't really thought of that. So maybe what I could add is an option in the settings where it lights up the first note on the piano roll. In the meantime you can open the piano roll and set the "Show note labels on key" in the settings so that when it shows the key signature at the top "G Major", you can match it with the corresponding note label.
- udit99 4mo ago
  This is amazing! A couple things: 1. Doesn't work on Firefox because of compatibility. (Web MIDI could not be enabled: DOMException: WebMIDI requires a site permission add-on to activate index-C82-1cwq.js:10:56869 doInitialize https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net/assets/index-C82-1cwq.js:10 https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net/assets/index-C82-1cwq.js... ) . Might be worth detecting browser and telling users straight up before they waste any time. 2. How did you come up with the melodies? Hand crafted? AI? Asking because I plan on building this for Gitori(www.gitori.com) at one point and my original idea was taking snippets from MIDI files of famous classical pieces/jazz solos Also, TIL about the Simon game. Might buy this for my 6 year old :)
  - garciansmith 4mo ago
    Worked fine for me in Firefox, both on Linux (though it first popped up a permissions request to access MIDI devices that I had to grant) and Android.
  - vunderba 4mo ago
    [dead]
functionmouse 4mo ago
I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.
- bigbuppo 4mo ago
  Umm... did y'all not have music class in elementary school?
  - functionmouse 4mo ago
    Literally everyone in my country did, and nobody knows theory except a subset of musicians, not even all of them. Thus highlighting my point that the theory is inadequate, subjective, and immature in nature.
    - taco_emoji 4mo ago
      That doesn't highlight anything except the tautology that music theory isn't taught in general education
    - compiler-guy 4mo ago
      Whatever else music theory is, "immature" isn't one of them. Western music theory has evolved over literally thousands of years. You can put a very rough start of it to Pythagoras, around 550BCe ish, which gives us 2,500 years of evolution and refinement. But even if you want to start with the popularity and adoption of the major scale, that was around 1500CE ish, which gives us a solid 500 years. It handles many, many corner cases quite gracefully. It undoubtedly has its quirks, but any notational system for this will also have its quirks (cf, the difference between systems of intonation). There is just no way around it.
    - LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
      Have you written any pieces?
potato-peeler 4mo ago
Hey this seems like a nice tool. I would request if you can also add examples/demo for a listener before they begin the test, like intervals(what is P5, m6,etc how they sound), chords(major/minor chord in different octave), etc. That way listener would know about each facet of music, and then they can take the test.
triplechill 4mo ago
The Android app link doesn't seem to work
mentalgear 4mo ago
I was expecting this was a tool to help people who couldn't distinguish sounds in a noisy environment to train their ears. But its for musical training. (which may or may not help?)
- khazhoux 4mo ago
  You expected one thing but found it was not what you thought. What is the takeaway for us?
- fl4regun 4mo ago
  "ear training" is the term we use as musicians to refer to the skill this website is dedicated to. It is a fundamental skill of music.
articlepan 4mo ago
This is great! For scale degree after chord progression exercise, I'd love a variation where the chord progression is in a minor key.
HelloUsername 4mo ago
The Show HN 11 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117072 34 comments
dwringer 4mo ago
This site insisted on having write access to my connected MIDI devices, which is a bit concerning as it's not required for what the site actually does.
- altho123 4mo ago
  They're asking for midi device control & reprogram, my guess is that for some of the exercises you can use your own midi keyboard to input the note (dictation etc.)
  - dwringer 4mo ago
    I figured the same, but I did not encounter such exercises, and regardless having the ability to send sysex to my MIDI devices is not required for such a thing.
xlii 4mo ago
Tip: you don't have to recognize sounds in order to compose music. I have aphantasia and can't memorize sounds or recall them. For decades I thought I'm deaf (Ockham say hi). But I picked up piano, play for 3 years, can't discern C from G if my life depended on it but my friends tell me I'm pretty decent composer. Writing this so people don't get disappointed about themselves just because they can't pick ear skills.
- fl4regun 4mo ago
  can you tell if a piano is out of tune? I'm curious since I don't know anyone with aphantasia. Can you tell if someone is playing your composition correctly?
  - analog31 4mo ago
    It's possible to tell from one note. The reason is that the unisons will be out of tune with one another and change the tone quality.
  - xlii 4mo ago
    Yes I can. That's also the reason why I can compose at all. The analogy would be like: I don't know how pink color is named, but I can say it's pretty. And on the output: I don't know what colors I used, but the image is pretty. Only my music teacher tried to play and I knew it didn't work well. It's a peculiar thing.
- commandlinefan 4mo ago
  I've been doing these exercises regularly for years and haven't made much progress ;). I still perform music regularly and get positive feedback. I do hope that some day I'll get to where these exercises seem easy - I haven't made much progress, but I do make a tiny bit at a time.
- wisemang 4mo ago
  First I’ve heard of aphantasia applied to sound / music. Though I have on a number of occasions thought about the concept. I have (visual) aphantasia. But am better able to remember / hear notes and timbres in my head than images. Never really tried composing and for the number of years I took piano lessons I’m pretty crap at it (lessons don’t matter if you don’t practice in between). But sounds stick with me more than visuals. So interesting that it’s all on a spectrum with these various facets.
RigelKentaurus 4mo ago
Very useful, thank you for building it and sharing it.
incognito124 4mo ago
There's this wonderful android app called perfect ear: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evilduck.musiciankit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evilduck.m... It has interactive exercises and singing practice
chairmansteve 4mo ago
This looks really good!
titzer 4mo ago
This is a great domain for vibe-coding your own apps. I put together a combined music notation / ear trainer app as a single HTML app: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/RiffHound/blob/main/webui/quiz/index.html https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... I've been working on a voice trainer that uses DSP to analyze a signal and do real-time pitch tracking: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/RiffHound/blob/main/webui/voice/v0.2.html https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... The latter I've been using to suck just a tiny bit less at singing.
- falnatsheh 4mo ago
  Amazing, I just used the ear training one to hum a tune and then find the notes to play it
- alok-g 4mo ago
  Very nice! My wish list for UX / features: For the Note Quiz, it was not immediately obvious to me what I need to do - i.e., pick from one of the four what were answer choices. Consider adding some instructions for newbies like me. I got 90% right for the Note quiz. On Key Quiz, I won't even get 20%. :-) Either way, it would help to have a "Teach" mode also, not just Quiz/evaluate mode. This may show me two keys/chords/sequences side-by-side along with the answers (and prioritizing the cases that I tend to get wrong). I could then hear those repeatedly at will to learn to distinguish. For the pitch tracking, I wish for a view that is not centered on a waveform but on the instrument. My goal is to improve my voice to sing the right notes/sequence, not the entire time history of it. So a long/moving waveform is less helpful. A simple view for notes training could be a horizontal piano roll (seeing it like a piano in the front of me) showing a red mark on the piano roll itself for the note / frequency I am singing. For note sequences and transitions, the same view could show (vertical) waveforms like you have in the Note Quiz (three notes lasting for some three seconds) comparing the desired vs. the actual. Thanks! PS: Are you planning to add some FOSS license?
  - titzer 4mo ago
    All interesting suggestions. I might add a toggle for horizontal mode, but would probably retain both modes to not lose functionality. For my other apps I have forks of each version, with the idea that if it changes radically from one version to the next, one can always go back to a live copy of the old version. I pushed an Apache 2.0 license. Feel free to clone the GitHub repo and throw Claude at it. It might surprise you how well it can add features to a single file HTML; it can work out basically how the entire thing works without needing to read any docs. So by all means, vibe code a fork :)
adamddev1 4mo ago
Excellently built, no nonsense site. Refreshing to see a site that just loads instantly without spinners. The exercises are also well thought out.
masfuerte 4mo ago
I'm quite disappointed this wasn't about ear waggling.
hsuduebc2 4mo ago
I’ve always been curious if blindly plucking guitar strings could map the pitches in your mind. So you would eventually play any melody by ear just as easily as whistling it.
webprofusion 4mo ago
It looks a little basic but it's actually pretty cool.
paytonjjones 4mo ago
Very cool! Many people don't know this, but all kids can learn perfect pitch before age ~5-6. So if you have kids, use the perfect pitch trainer function :) For a more complete training program, shameless plug for an app I built / ported for that purpose: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app
trane_project 4mo ago
I highly advice anyone against taking up this type of ear training practice if what they want is just to play music recreationally. I did it for a while, stressed out about it, and I saw very little improvement in what really mattered to me, which was just to be able to play music freely. If that is also your goal, you would be better served by learning how to play along recordings and use them to improvise along them. Your ear is already good, given that you can hear music, and this relies on using those existing abilities. There is no existing ability to label random sounds out of a musical context. I am still unsure how mastering all of these puzzles turns into actual musicianship, but some people swear by it, so I guess it eventually happens if you do it for long enough. I wrote a guide on how to do this: https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcription/transcription_guide.html https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcript... Honestly I have stopped doing anything else and I have seen my actual musicianship skyrocket and I am having 1000x more fun than I did before. It's not that different from how music was taught before notation was widespread with the advantage of now having recordings and easy ways to loop them, slow them down, and change their pitch. I am hoping to eventually make a product in this space based on this pedagogy once I finish the one I am currently working on. But honestly it's not really needed if you are fine with just doing it with the songs you like without a full curriculum and fancy scheduling.
- LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
  You "wrote" a guide, yet it's in "generated_courses"? Interesting
  - trane_project 4mo ago
    It's related to this https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcription.html https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcript... which generates all the individual lessons for each stage in the guide. It has nothing to do with generative AI. The software is not really needed if you just want to jam along your own songs, I just didn't have a better place to put the guide.
    - 4mo ago
aesthesia 4mo ago
I appreciate the extremely low fuss interface, but I'm always a little disappointed by chord progression ear training that just plays triads one after another with no thought for voice leading. Generating a nice voice leading for an arbitrary chord progression is a little tricky to do automatically but far from impossible, and might be a fun exercise either for you or your favorite LLM.
p0w3n3d 4mo ago
I love how the site's name reads almost "tone deaf" with one letter changed. There is also a similar site on https://musictheory.net https://musictheory.net - I wonder if the functionality is the same -- edit -- This one has this nice chord progression excercise.
gbro3n 4mo ago
Awesome, this is a great resource. I've been working on https://www.asmusictheory.com https://www.asmusictheory.com , which focuses excercises around an interactive onscreen / midi capable keyboard (where it makes sense). I'm building it as I learn myself.
- gbro3n 4mo ago
  Thank you, any feedback is appreciated.
bifftastic 4mo ago
One comment - the perfect pitch exercise becomes a relative pitch exercise as soon as you get one note right. I don't believe I have perfect pitch but I got 100% on the quiz I just did.
atique29 4mo ago
was just looking for good ear training materials, found a couple of awesome ones from this post. Thanks!
ogig 4mo ago
I've used this site for quite some years now. Shameless plug: As someone struggling with ear training I created an app that tackles something that the usual suspects wont; the concept of been in tune or not: Probably worthless for trained musicians, but if you can't even tell if something is in tune, or why are 5th so used: https://intunetrainer.conpixel.es/ https://intunetrainer.conpixel.es/
- vunderba 4mo ago
  Nice job. There's also a relatively well-known app called "TE Tuner" which I've used when helping my students become familiar with fretless instruments (such as the violin) specifically because it lets you visualize the sound you're playing at the cents level. I've found it can be quite helpful at the early stages of learning.
nicotejera 4mo ago
I attend a music school and as I progress through the subjects have built my own tools as well. It includes a variety of things, intervals, chords, musical dictation, scales, theory. Feel free to try it out: https://music.nicotejera.com/ https://music.nicotejera.com/
wodenokoto 4mo ago
Maybe they should add a level zero - tell if the second tone is higher or lower.
actinium226 4mo ago
I tried this years ago to try to develop my ability to play by ear. What I ended up learning is that if you want to learn to play by ear, learn to sing, don't bother with exercises like this, at least not until you've gotten some singing practice in. When singing, you have to hear the intervals in your head before you sing them, so developing that ability to generate the intervals in your head will help you to recognize them later on.
- Tade0 4mo ago
  This. With some practice you can even get a decent idea what note a given sound is by humming it - it's far from precise, but at least you can tell e.g. E from G.
wolfcola 4mo ago
website refuses to play sounds on mobile safari; extremely frustrating.
ingvay7 4mo ago
I've never been able to identify keys except for the higher E. Just that seemingly one low bar skill has helped me tune up my guitar to normal over the years instead of searching for a tuner. It's incredible how some folks do this effectively across all keys, modes etc
HymnIA 4mo ago
thank's for your tips !
i4i 4mo ago
Let's not forget MusicTheory.net Been around forever and has a very robust set of exercises and lessons. Free online and a great app as well. https://www.musictheory.net/exercises https://www.musictheory.net/exercises
pwdisswordfishq 4mo ago
> Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "resume", MIDI.WebAudio.getContext() is undefined Every other time I try to launch a test. Someone's bad at asynchronous programming.

332 points by mattbit 4mo ago

These are all good exercises that help you build a solid foundation, but they can sometimes cause motivation to dip being somewhat clinical in nature. So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. I find that the satisfaction they get from being able to recreate a familiar pop‑culture melody really helps spark their interest in getting better at playing by ear, which in turn motivates them to stick with the exercises. Shameless plug but I built a unique game specifically to help some of my more classically trained friends get better at playing piano by ear. It's a free piano game in the style of the old "Simon" toy which presents players with increasingly longer sequences of musical notes and challenges them to reproduce the sequence using either an on-screen piano or connected MIDI keyboard. It also works with acoustic instruments through the mic. https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net

smeej 4mo ago
Just testing out practice mode, I found what I really wanted was to be able to stay at a certain level until I felt I was getting good at sequences of that length, not immediately get pushed to the next level every time even when it took me 8 tries to get the 4-note sequence right. Give me a chance to feel like I'm improving! Don't just keep giving me harder things when I keep struggling with the existing ones.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  It already has that feature! :) It’s just not very obvious. If you click the small lock icon near the top, it will snap and to that difficulty so you can practice only sequences with that specific number of notes.
  - enobrev 4mo ago
    This is so well done and very cool. Thanks for building it and offering it. As someone who hasn't had a piano lesson in about 40 years, I find myself wanting to play with the keys to match the melody. So I hear the initial melody, and then I'm practically hitting keys at random (guessing where I should be on the keyboard) until I find the first note, and then I have to listen over and over again while trying to find the second note. I kind of want to hunt and peck until I'm ready and then get tested to see if I nailed it.
    - vunderba 4mo ago
      Glad you like it! A couple of people have asked for this feature and I guess I've been struggling with how to fit this concept into the game. Maybe the answer really is just as simple as a little visual toggle that puts you in a "sandbox" mode where all the sounds still go through, but the game doesn’t respond to them until you untoggle it.
      - latexr 4mo ago
        Put me up as another person wanting that feature, it was how I expected it would work.
        udit99 4mo ago
        same!
        vunderba 4mo ago
        Done! It's a toggle called "Free Play", and you can default it to on in the Settings.
        enobrev 4mo ago
        I love it! So much fun. Thanks for adding Free Play!
      - udit99 4mo ago
- gbro3n 4mo ago
  For https://www.asmusictheory.com https://www.asmusictheory.com, I built in a spaced repetition test section to aid memory retention, along with "a free play" mode for when you just want to explore.
  - treme 4mo ago
    looks fantastic, just what I was looking for. will try, tyvm
    - gbro3n 4mo ago
      Thank you. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
  - ____tom____ 4mo ago
    No sound on an iPhone. They keyboard visually responds. Tried safari and Firefox focus
    - gbro3n 4mo ago
      Thank you for your feedback - I have it working on iPadOS 26.5 (Chrome and Safari). The browser auto-play policy does require some interaction with the page before it will play (so the first key press is often mute, but should sound after). There is a button on the control bar to enable sound explicitly. I will look for more instances (not to ask the really obvious question, but do you have sound turned up or a bluetooth connection you're not aware of by any chance?). Thanks again
swestwood 4mo ago
This is really simple and great!! Thanks for not stuffing it with ads. Is there a way to make it work a bit better for phones? On mobile Safari, just tapping to enable sound doesn’t seem to work until I reload and tap again.
apercu 4mo ago
I think this is smart. I have never done ear training apps because I just don't like to learn music that way - it doesn't "stick" for me. I like to learn in the context of a song. Here's what a melody sounds like when you start it over the 1 of a chord. Here's a melody when you start it on the 3 over a chord. But, again, in the context of a known song. I just don't think "non-musical" exercises have ever moved me forward as a musician, if that makes sense.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  I’m with you. I rarely use mechanical drills, even though I recognize that they can sometimes have value (cough Hanon cough), especially when you’re focusing on ergonomics. I tend instead to focus on things my student already enjoys, because it gives them a grounding. Another trick I like to do is take a popular song, rip out the melody, and keep the chord progression. Then I’ll usually scaffold a nice accompaniment using Band-in-a-Box so the student has something looping in the background while they try to piece out the original melody themselves on their respective instrument. That can sometimes give them more guidance, since it locks them into a specific key signature and helps them feel the flow and explore the space.
sebastiansm7 4mo ago
This is very fun!
raincole 4mo ago
First of all, thank you for making it free! I'm completely new to ear training. Could you give some advice on what a newbie should think while doing this? For example, should I try to sing the thing in solfeges in my head, or it's considered bad practice? And if I do, should I sing the first note as Do?
- vunderba 4mo ago
  So the only problem is that until you've internalized the intervals a bit better, you might get frustrated trying to sing out solfege since you might say "re" when the note was "mi" in the context of the key signature and that might reinforce a bad intervalic relationship. However you could still hum/whistle the pitches as an assistive tool. If you’d like to make things a bit easier, you can go into the options and restrict the key signature. That way you can keep it simple and just practice in a more common keys like one major scale like C major and its relative minor, A minor. Where I really recommend "singing" out each note is when I'm teaching my students to improvise on the piano since it creates a sort of intentionality about what you’re about to hear and sing. For example, if they had a chord progression or melodic idea in mind but accidentally played a wrong note, they’ll notice right away because what they’re singing won’t match what they’re playing. Whereas if you don’t sing or whistle the notes as you play your instrument, you might not notice that you’re drifting off from what you actually intended to play because within the confines of the key signature it might still sound melodically acceptable (if that makes sense).
adamddev1 4mo ago
This is quite a nice idea and works well, but I think I would rather spend the time listening to and imitating real Miles Davis solos etc.
makr17 4mo ago
I remember in jazz class the instructor had a stack of jingles that showcased particular "weird" intervals. The only one I really remember now is the "Alway Coca Cola" jingle and a M6, but this was a _long_ time ago.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  Yes! "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" is another popular one for demonstrating a major 6th. Side note but I'd love to see a nicely printed stack of physical cards with popular melodic hooks/jingles, the demonstrated intervals, notation, etc.
dasyatidprime 4mo ago
> So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. As someone who had ongoing formal musical training from childhood through university, I can attest that multiple teachers used a similar technique, focusing on finding a group of commonly-heard melodies such that the first intervals encountered in them cover as much of the set as possible. Haven't tried the game yet, but looking forward to checking it out later to see if I can offer it to some of my friends who want to learn music better!
alok-g 4mo ago
Nice! My wish list for this: 1. Even the practice mode has a high bar as it expects me to get the whole thing right in the first shot. It should let me try some before jumping to tell me I got it wrong and automatically playing it again. 2. Show me the first key of the sequence and have me figure only the rest. Why: When I hear the note sequence, I cannot pick the absolute scale, only the intervals. So I practically always get the first key wrong, which then goes to #1 above. May be there are some settings related to the above. I could not find if there.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  Hi alok-g, I'm going to be implementing number 1 - a "playground" that lets you sort of plink around until you're happy. I've gotten a number of requests for this. The second request has me a bit confused, so I may be misunderstanding. Under “Note hints” in the options, there are three different modes for practice. In all of them in Practice Mode, the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Then depending on the "Note Hints", you can basically change the exercise from an ear training exercise to a sheet reading exercise. If you change Mode from Practice to Simon, even though it doesn't show the first note - it's always the root of the signature - e.g. if it says G Major, then the first note of the sequence is always G. I should probably make that more clear. Does that description line up with what you’re seeing?
  - alok-g 4mo ago
    >> ... the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Oh, the sheet notation! I can't read that :-), so had completely ignored it. I would like to see the same notes on the piano roll!, say as labels on the keys "*1", "2", "3", "4" (the same options could control the visibility).
    - vunderba 4mo ago
      Oh! I completely hadn't really thought of that. So maybe what I could add is an option in the settings where it lights up the first note on the piano roll. In the meantime you can open the piano roll and set the "Show note labels on key" in the settings so that when it shows the key signature at the top "G Major", you can match it with the corresponding note label.
udit99 4mo ago
This is amazing! A couple things: 1. Doesn't work on Firefox because of compatibility. (Web MIDI could not be enabled: DOMException: WebMIDI requires a site permission add-on to activate index-C82-1cwq.js:10:56869 doInitialize https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net/assets/index-C82-1cwq.js:10 https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net/assets/index-C82-1cwq.js... ) . Might be worth detecting browser and telling users straight up before they waste any time. 2. How did you come up with the melodies? Hand crafted? AI? Asking because I plan on building this for Gitori(www.gitori.com) at one point and my original idea was taking snippets from MIDI files of famous classical pieces/jazz solos Also, TIL about the Simon game. Might buy this for my 6 year old :)
- garciansmith 4mo ago
  Worked fine for me in Firefox, both on Linux (though it first popped up a permissions request to access MIDI devices that I had to grant) and Android.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  [dead]

functionmouse 4mo ago

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

bigbuppo 4mo ago
Umm... did y'all not have music class in elementary school?
- functionmouse 4mo ago
  Literally everyone in my country did, and nobody knows theory except a subset of musicians, not even all of them. Thus highlighting my point that the theory is inadequate, subjective, and immature in nature.
  - taco_emoji 4mo ago
    That doesn't highlight anything except the tautology that music theory isn't taught in general education
  - compiler-guy 4mo ago
    Whatever else music theory is, "immature" isn't one of them. Western music theory has evolved over literally thousands of years. You can put a very rough start of it to Pythagoras, around 550BCe ish, which gives us 2,500 years of evolution and refinement. But even if you want to start with the popularity and adoption of the major scale, that was around 1500CE ish, which gives us a solid 500 years. It handles many, many corner cases quite gracefully. It undoubtedly has its quirks, but any notational system for this will also have its quirks (cf, the difference between systems of intonation). There is just no way around it.
  - LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
    Have you written any pieces?

potato-peeler 4mo ago

Hey this seems like a nice tool. I would request if you can also add examples/demo for a listener before they begin the test, like intervals(what is P5, m6,etc how they sound), chords(major/minor chord in different octave), etc. That way listener would know about each facet of music, and then they can take the test.

triplechill 4mo ago

The Android app link doesn't seem to work

mentalgear 4mo ago

I was expecting this was a tool to help people who couldn't distinguish sounds in a noisy environment to train their ears. But its for musical training. (which may or may not help?)

khazhoux 4mo ago
You expected one thing but found it was not what you thought. What is the takeaway for us?
fl4regun 4mo ago
"ear training" is the term we use as musicians to refer to the skill this website is dedicated to. It is a fundamental skill of music.

articlepan 4mo ago

This is great! For scale degree after chord progression exercise, I'd love a variation where the chord progression is in a minor key.

HelloUsername 4mo ago

The Show HN 11 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117072 34 comments

dwringer 4mo ago

This site insisted on having write access to my connected MIDI devices, which is a bit concerning as it's not required for what the site actually does.

altho123 4mo ago
They're asking for midi device control & reprogram, my guess is that for some of the exercises you can use your own midi keyboard to input the note (dictation etc.)
- dwringer 4mo ago
  I figured the same, but I did not encounter such exercises, and regardless having the ability to send sysex to my MIDI devices is not required for such a thing.

xlii 4mo ago

Tip: you don't have to recognize sounds in order to compose music. I have aphantasia and can't memorize sounds or recall them. For decades I thought I'm deaf (Ockham say hi). But I picked up piano, play for 3 years, can't discern C from G if my life depended on it but my friends tell me I'm pretty decent composer. Writing this so people don't get disappointed about themselves just because they can't pick ear skills.

fl4regun 4mo ago
can you tell if a piano is out of tune? I'm curious since I don't know anyone with aphantasia. Can you tell if someone is playing your composition correctly?
- analog31 4mo ago
  It's possible to tell from one note. The reason is that the unisons will be out of tune with one another and change the tone quality.
- xlii 4mo ago
  Yes I can. That's also the reason why I can compose at all. The analogy would be like: I don't know how pink color is named, but I can say it's pretty. And on the output: I don't know what colors I used, but the image is pretty. Only my music teacher tried to play and I knew it didn't work well. It's a peculiar thing.
commandlinefan 4mo ago
I've been doing these exercises regularly for years and haven't made much progress ;). I still perform music regularly and get positive feedback. I do hope that some day I'll get to where these exercises seem easy - I haven't made much progress, but I do make a tiny bit at a time.
wisemang 4mo ago
First I’ve heard of aphantasia applied to sound / music. Though I have on a number of occasions thought about the concept. I have (visual) aphantasia. But am better able to remember / hear notes and timbres in my head than images. Never really tried composing and for the number of years I took piano lessons I’m pretty crap at it (lessons don’t matter if you don’t practice in between). But sounds stick with me more than visuals. So interesting that it’s all on a spectrum with these various facets.

RigelKentaurus 4mo ago

Very useful, thank you for building it and sharing it.

incognito124 4mo ago

There's this wonderful android app called perfect ear: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evilduck.musiciankit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evilduck.m... It has interactive exercises and singing practice

chairmansteve 4mo ago

This looks really good!

titzer 4mo ago

This is a great domain for vibe-coding your own apps. I put together a combined music notation / ear trainer app as a single HTML app: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/RiffHound/blob/main/webui/quiz/index.html https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... I've been working on a voice trainer that uses DSP to analyze a signal and do real-time pitch tracking: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/RiffHound/blob/main/webui/voice/v0.2.html https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... The latter I've been using to suck just a tiny bit less at singing.

falnatsheh 4mo ago
Amazing, I just used the ear training one to hum a tune and then find the notes to play it
alok-g 4mo ago
Very nice! My wish list for UX / features: For the Note Quiz, it was not immediately obvious to me what I need to do - i.e., pick from one of the four what were answer choices. Consider adding some instructions for newbies like me. I got 90% right for the Note quiz. On Key Quiz, I won't even get 20%. :-) Either way, it would help to have a "Teach" mode also, not just Quiz/evaluate mode. This may show me two keys/chords/sequences side-by-side along with the answers (and prioritizing the cases that I tend to get wrong). I could then hear those repeatedly at will to learn to distinguish. For the pitch tracking, I wish for a view that is not centered on a waveform but on the instrument. My goal is to improve my voice to sing the right notes/sequence, not the entire time history of it. So a long/moving waveform is less helpful. A simple view for notes training could be a horizontal piano roll (seeing it like a piano in the front of me) showing a red mark on the piano roll itself for the note / frequency I am singing. For note sequences and transitions, the same view could show (vertical) waveforms like you have in the Note Quiz (three notes lasting for some three seconds) comparing the desired vs. the actual. Thanks! PS: Are you planning to add some FOSS license?
- titzer 4mo ago
  All interesting suggestions. I might add a toggle for horizontal mode, but would probably retain both modes to not lose functionality. For my other apps I have forks of each version, with the idea that if it changes radically from one version to the next, one can always go back to a live copy of the old version. I pushed an Apache 2.0 license. Feel free to clone the GitHub repo and throw Claude at it. It might surprise you how well it can add features to a single file HTML; it can work out basically how the entire thing works without needing to read any docs. So by all means, vibe code a fork :)

adamddev1 4mo ago

Excellently built, no nonsense site. Refreshing to see a site that just loads instantly without spinners. The exercises are also well thought out.

masfuerte 4mo ago

I'm quite disappointed this wasn't about ear waggling.

hsuduebc2 4mo ago

I’ve always been curious if blindly plucking guitar strings could map the pitches in your mind. So you would eventually play any melody by ear just as easily as whistling it.

webprofusion 4mo ago

It looks a little basic but it's actually pretty cool.

paytonjjones 4mo ago

Very cool! Many people don't know this, but all kids can learn perfect pitch before age ~5-6. So if you have kids, use the perfect pitch trainer function :) For a more complete training program, shameless plug for an app I built / ported for that purpose: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app

trane_project 4mo ago

I highly advice anyone against taking up this type of ear training practice if what they want is just to play music recreationally. I did it for a while, stressed out about it, and I saw very little improvement in what really mattered to me, which was just to be able to play music freely. If that is also your goal, you would be better served by learning how to play along recordings and use them to improvise along them. Your ear is already good, given that you can hear music, and this relies on using those existing abilities. There is no existing ability to label random sounds out of a musical context. I am still unsure how mastering all of these puzzles turns into actual musicianship, but some people swear by it, so I guess it eventually happens if you do it for long enough. I wrote a guide on how to do this: https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcription/transcription_guide.html https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcript... Honestly I have stopped doing anything else and I have seen my actual musicianship skyrocket and I am having 1000x more fun than I did before. It's not that different from how music was taught before notation was widespread with the advantage of now having recordings and easy ways to loop them, slow them down, and change their pitch. I am hoping to eventually make a product in this space based on this pedagogy once I finish the one I am currently working on. But honestly it's not really needed if you are fine with just doing it with the songs you like without a full curriculum and fancy scheduling.

LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
You "wrote" a guide, yet it's in "generated_courses"? Interesting
- trane_project 4mo ago
  It's related to this https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcription.html https://trane-project.github.io/generated_courses/transcript... which generates all the individual lessons for each stage in the guide. It has nothing to do with generative AI. The software is not really needed if you just want to jam along your own songs, I just didn't have a better place to put the guide.
  - 4mo ago

aesthesia 4mo ago

I appreciate the extremely low fuss interface, but I'm always a little disappointed by chord progression ear training that just plays triads one after another with no thought for voice leading. Generating a nice voice leading for an arbitrary chord progression is a little tricky to do automatically but far from impossible, and might be a fun exercise either for you or your favorite LLM.

p0w3n3d 4mo ago

I love how the site's name reads almost "tone deaf" with one letter changed. There is also a similar site on https://musictheory.net https://musictheory.net - I wonder if the functionality is the same -- edit -- This one has this nice chord progression excercise.

gbro3n 4mo ago

Awesome, this is a great resource. I've been working on https://www.asmusictheory.com https://www.asmusictheory.com , which focuses excercises around an interactive onscreen / midi capable keyboard (where it makes sense). I'm building it as I learn myself.

gbro3n 4mo ago
Thank you, any feedback is appreciated.

bifftastic 4mo ago

One comment - the perfect pitch exercise becomes a relative pitch exercise as soon as you get one note right. I don't believe I have perfect pitch but I got 100% on the quiz I just did.

atique29 4mo ago

was just looking for good ear training materials, found a couple of awesome ones from this post. Thanks!

ogig 4mo ago

I've used this site for quite some years now. Shameless plug: As someone struggling with ear training I created an app that tackles something that the usual suspects wont; the concept of been in tune or not: Probably worthless for trained musicians, but if you can't even tell if something is in tune, or why are 5th so used: https://intunetrainer.conpixel.es/ https://intunetrainer.conpixel.es/

vunderba 4mo ago
Nice job. There's also a relatively well-known app called "TE Tuner" which I've used when helping my students become familiar with fretless instruments (such as the violin) specifically because it lets you visualize the sound you're playing at the cents level. I've found it can be quite helpful at the early stages of learning.

nicotejera 4mo ago

I attend a music school and as I progress through the subjects have built my own tools as well. It includes a variety of things, intervals, chords, musical dictation, scales, theory. Feel free to try it out: https://music.nicotejera.com/ https://music.nicotejera.com/

wodenokoto 4mo ago

Maybe they should add a level zero - tell if the second tone is higher or lower.

actinium226 4mo ago

I tried this years ago to try to develop my ability to play by ear. What I ended up learning is that if you want to learn to play by ear, learn to sing, don't bother with exercises like this, at least not until you've gotten some singing practice in. When singing, you have to hear the intervals in your head before you sing them, so developing that ability to generate the intervals in your head will help you to recognize them later on.

Tade0 4mo ago
This. With some practice you can even get a decent idea what note a given sound is by humming it - it's far from precise, but at least you can tell e.g. E from G.

wolfcola 4mo ago

website refuses to play sounds on mobile safari; extremely frustrating.

ingvay7 4mo ago

I've never been able to identify keys except for the higher E. Just that seemingly one low bar skill has helped me tune up my guitar to normal over the years instead of searching for a tuner. It's incredible how some folks do this effectively across all keys, modes etc

HymnIA 4mo ago

thank's for your tips !

i4i 4mo ago

Let's not forget MusicTheory.net Been around forever and has a very robust set of exercises and lessons. Free online and a great app as well. https://www.musictheory.net/exercises https://www.musictheory.net/exercises

pwdisswordfishq 4mo ago

> Uncaught TypeError: can't access property "resume", MIDI.WebAudio.getContext() is undefined Every other time I try to launch a test. Someone's bad at asynchronous programming.